1960's

JANIS JOPLIN1943–1970‘The most powerful white blues singer of the 1960s.’

Originally from Port Arthur, Texas, Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company as lead vocalist in 1966. She won rave reviews for her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Her albums were Cheap Thrills (with Big Brother), and I got dem ol’ kozmic blues again Mama (1968, solo). Janis died of a drug overdose in 1970 and did not see her albumPearl yield a number one single ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ in 1971.

Inspired by the Beatles album Revolver, Brian Wilson produced the Beach Boys masterpiece album Pet Sounds in 1966. The album used innovative overdubbing recording techniques to give a thickly textured sound and developed a connecting theme of youthful insecurity throughout the song lyrics. Although it was critically acclaimed, Pet Sounds did not sell well. However the highly produced, psychedelic single Good Vibrations which followed Pet Sounds went to number one.

Born: Robert ZimmermanMay 1941, Duluth, Minnesota‘The most influential American pop musician of the sixties.’

In the early 1960s, Bob Dylan’s biting humour, his expressive, topical lyrics and his unique nasal singing style gained him a large following, especially in the New York folk scene. His second album (1963) included ‘Blowin’ in the wind’, a million-selling hit for Peter, Paul and Mary.

Dylan created rather than followed popular music trends. He changed his sound from acoustic to amplified rock in his 1965 album Bringing it all back home, then changed to country rock in 1968 with the album John Wesley Harding and later Nashville Skyline.

A pivotal event in rock history, it caught the flowering of hippie culture and started a pop music revolution. Thirty acts from around the world played to an audience of 50,000 and introduced major new artists like Jimi Hendrix to the public.

Some artists who performed at Monterey were Janis Joplin, the Who, the Grateful Dead, the Byrds,Jefferson Airplane, the Animals, Ravi Shankar, Hugh Masekela,Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, Otis Redding,Booker T and the MGs, the Steve Miller Blues Band and Jimi Hendrix.

Monterey showed that there was an audience for new and different styles of music that embraced elements of jazz, blues, folk, soul, African and Eastern music.

The members of the Byrds, David Crosby,Chris Hillman, GeneClark, Michael Clarkeand Roger McGuinn all belonged to other folk groups before the Byrds. The Byrds’ first hit was Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ which featured tight harmonies and McGuinn’s unique ‘finger-picking’ 12-string electric guitar sound. The song went to UK and US number one in 1965. Their next hit in the same year, ‘All I really want to do’, was another Dylan song. The biblically inspired ‘Turn, turn, turn’ was followed in 1966 with another hit ‘Eight miles high’.

The Byrds influenced many later rock bands including the Eagles, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac and R.E.M.